outside Sam's Liquor
children dabble in cigarettes
their stolen bicycles
scattered in the dusty alley
like wounded horses
last night
they pillaged McDonald's
threw frozen beef patties
at cars on slow cruise
up & down the bruised blvd.
even José
the neighborhood dope dealer
offered them jobs
making heroin drops
after school
but like tiny fires
soon consumed into one
these kids
just continue to burn
& burn chaos through
the sleepy barrio streets
She hadn't spoken since they found her. No failed gunshot. No blood trailing from the wrist like some polluted stream where teenagers toss beer bottle caps and watch them float drunkenly into tomorrow. No pill bottle next to her rain slick body to reflect the emptiness she tried to leave behind.
She'd climbed to the top of the Bank of America building downtown. An old tape deck in her lap sung the hiss and pop of 70s AM radio hits. Hall & Oates. "She's Gone" lingered in the background like some soft buoyant cloud cutting thru the sunlight to erase the rain.
In her hands, a 6ft steel mop handle pointed to the sky like a steeple...as she prayed for lightening. The janitor reeked of malt liquor. Ball-parked she'd been up here at least two days.
A week in this state run mental health facility and no one knew her name. After noon meds, I sat beside her in a pink beanbag chair. Sipped a diet Pepsi and read through Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" for the hundredth time. She looked up from her knotted fingers and stared through me into some shadowed scene full of her absence...and spoke softly: "Everything I say is a poem".
